


starboy

by bleubirdsong



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Hunk & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Prophetic Dreams, Self-Discovery, Some Plot, Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), Strange Dreams, i did about an hour of research and you see only four words, lance is not totally human, lance talks a lot to blue who tries to be helpful but isn't really, lance's pov mostly but some allura pov, lance's skincare routine, mentions of shirogone, namedrops of astronomical terms, the lance backstory we all want is lowkey mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 15:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10130015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleubirdsong/pseuds/bleubirdsong
Summary: Lance has been having weird dreams lately that leave him shaking in the middle of the night. At first, it's nothing. But then he starts sleeping less and less and something has to give.Something does.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Faulty_Fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faulty_Fics/gifts).



> title not related to the weeknd's song
> 
> for all you MW and ADC fans...i'm working on them, I promise. real life has been real dreadful lately. i've started chatting with someone who's helping me work out kinks in the plot for those tho so i'm optimistic ^^

Lance had always been fascinated by the stars.

His fondest memories were sitting on the beach with his mother, a borrowed telescope pointed at the skies while they pointed out their own constellations and his mother would tell him stories of supernovas and the life cycles of stars. His mother had always loved the night sky and had dreamed of working with the Garrison, but the cards had been thrown and she ended up as a professor at the local university, teaching astronomy.

Lance had learned to love the stars from sitting at her knee, and had taken his chance to apply to the Garrison when he turned sixteen. He’d been accepted, and began to learn to fly the ships that would take humankind closer to the vast reaches of space. When he’d ended up flying a blue robotic space lion who could open up wormholes to reach the furthest bounds of space, it was like a dream come true.

Lance looked out at the unfamiliar stars beyond the thick Altean glass, leaning against the railing and sighing. He was closer than he’d ever been, but the sharp pang of homesickness took the bright edge off of his excitement, as well as the uncertainty of fighting a war in space. Despite fantastical bedtime stories of alien microbes floating around in the vacuum of space, it was hard to reconcile the fact that aliens existed and that the vice of war wasn’t exclusive to humankind only.

“Lance?” Hunk walked up behind him, face kind. He held out his arms and Lance threw himself in them. He’d only known Hunk since meeting him at the Garrison, but they’d become fast friends and Lance knew that piloting Blue wouldn’t be the same without Hunk at his side. His literal side, since they were both legs.

Lance huffed into Hunk’s chest. “Sorry, got homesick again.”

“It happens. I miss my family too,” Hunk said, letting go of Lance and grinning. “I know what might cheer us both up, though. Pidge finally managed to set up a way for us to play that video-game!”

“Really? Awesome!” Lance cheered, fist-pumping the air. “What are we waiting for, then?” He grabbed Hunk’s hand and they ran to the door.

* * *

 

Sometimes, Lance had strange dreams. They never made a lot of sense to him, filled with multicolored swirls of dust and explosions that turned his dream vision white for ages at a time. He’d feel like he was burning alive and would wake up gasping, while sweat trickled down his neck and his hands shook.

He’d get up and take a shower, no matter the time in the night. Shaking hands would wrestle with the knob and he’d turn the water on as cold as it could go. Only after standing under an icy spray for long minutes would his hands stop shaking and the last vestiges of the dreams would leave him feeling lost.

Ever since he’d left Earth, the frequency of the strange dreams increased to where he was waking up in the middle of the night several times a week, as opposed to every few months. Lance took care to make sure nobody noticed his struggle with sleeping. He took his skincare routine to a higher level than ever before, experimenting with the strange Altean substances on board whenever there was downtime between missions or attacks. For a reason he couldn’t explain, he felt the overwhelming need to keep it secret.

Lance walked out of the shower, dripping ice-water before he wrapped a towel around his head. His fingernails were blue now, he noticed. Maybe he was turning into a zombie. Voltron already had humans, Galra, and Alteans. Maybe zombie germs would prove to be Galra Empire’s weakness.

Lance rubbed some of his special “dream-night” location onto his face and decided to visit Blue while it absorbed into his skin. The frequency of attacks had been increasing lately after Zarkon was left indisposed. Keith had found out that Zarkon was gravely wounded from his battle with Shiro, and that the Galra Empire was obsessed with throwing forces their way to keep them occupied until the Druids got him back on his dumb, clawed feet. He’d barely had time to visit Blue outside of battle-situations.

Blue purred inside his head, and Lance mentally sent her a kiss. He pulled on his pajamas and slippers and walked out into the darkened halls of the castle-ship. They were running their night cycle, and if Lance was judging the brightness of the muted lighting correctly, he had at least two hours before ‘sunrise.’

Lance slipped into Blue’s hangar, walking up to Blue’s head and jumping in when she let him in. He settled into his pilot’s chair and lay his left hand upon the console. Blue purred again in his mind, sending him a silent question.

“It’s the dreams again, beautiful. They’ve been getting worse and worse.” Lance rested his head on his right hand. “Maybe I need to finally find the alien girlfriend of my daytime dreams to chase the bad dreams away.”

Blue hummed in his mind, a note of definite amusement in her tone. “What?” Lance asked, squinting around suspiciously. “You trying to imply something?”

Blue laughed again before her humming turned contemplative. Lance heard a crackle and a screen opened up before his eyes, projecting the view of the stars from the deck.

“Blue?” Lance asked, sighing. “I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but why?”

The screen beeped before the view started flying forward at high speed. The view passed by stars and planets and patches of cosmic dust aplenty before leaving the galaxy there were in entirely. It traveled for a long thirty seconds before the next galaxy started to become visible.

Lance patted the console. “Blue, I know you mean well, girl, but giving me a tour of exactly how vast space is…is unlikely to help me deal with either homesickness or my dreams.”

Blue grumbled in his mind, and the view flew forward at an accelerated pace. Lance began to look away. He didn’t want to see the stars that his mother had loved so much fly before his very eyes, but Blue pleaded with him to keep looking with a note in her mental tone that Lance hadn’t heard before.

“Fine, I’ll look. What’s so important-” Lance cut off, his mouth going dry. The view was still going at the accelerated rate Blue had urged it to, but the patterns of stars started to look strangely familiar. Lance’s hands began to shake, and he leaned forward until his face was right before the screen, hands reaching down to shakily grip at his chair.

A multi-colored swirl of cosmic dust, red-orange and green in a pattern that Lance could vividly recall from his dreams. A cluster of protostars that Lance could remember forming in his dreams. In front of him, an absolutely massive blue star so bright that his vision turned white-

Lance breathed out a shaky breath, feeling feverish and hot and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, breathe…

* * *

 

Lance awoke in a familiar blue chair to the worried humming of Blue’s mind. His pajamas were glued to his skin and his hands hurt, muscle ache radiating all the way up his arms into his back. He breathed out, mouth still drier than the New Mexico desert. He didn’t think he could speak.

 _Blue?_ He mentally called out to Blue, who wrapped herself around his mind with overjoyed and comforting songs. Lance sat in the chair for a few long minutes, confused. He’d been so close to understanding, remembering something fundamental… It was lost. He’d been on the brink of understanding, his strange dreams had meant something...but whatever knowledge he’d obtained was fading away the longer he sat, like a bad dream.

Lance took a fortifying breath, pulling himself upright. His pajamas made a disgusting noise as they detached from his chair. Another shower, then. A glance out of the cockpit and the lights were almost on the dawn setting.

Blue hummed goodbye as Lance made his way out of the hangar and sped to the shower. A long icy shower later, Lance felt more alive again as he made his way back to his room. He pulled on his Altean underarmor and resigned himself to an early breakfast. He made his way to the kitchen, ready to even consume the plainest of food goo.

“Hey Lance,” Pidge yawned from her seat at the kitchen table. A plate of plain food goo, half-eaten, lay to her left as she typed away at her ever-present laptop.

“Hey, Pidge,” Lance said, adjusting the towel on his head as he started fiddling with the food goo machine. “You’re up early.”

Pidge looked at Lance with bleary eyes, visibly unimpressed. “I never sleep, Lance. What about the beauty sleep you’re constantly on about?”

Lance’s mouth fell open for half a second before he started posturing, gesticulating widely as the food goo machine processed his request. “I’ll have you know I get the perfect number of hours to keep my face looking great-”

“Lance?” Keith asked from the doorway, eyebrows raised in surprise. “You’re awake at this hour?”

Lance sputtered. “You’re awake at this hour too, it’s not as if it’s that weird.”

“I train,” Keith said with a quirk in his mouth. “You, however, never appear until at least a few hours later, missions and attacks notwithstanding.”

“You say that as if I’m physically incapable of waking up,” Lance prattled on as he loaded his plate of food goo and perched on the countertop. Keith was starting to roll his eyes and Lance could tell that Pidge had tuned them out a minute ago, so Lance finished babbling and occupied himself with his food goo. Suspicion averted, he mentally cheered as Keith hissed with exasperation and started fiddling with the food goo machine himself.

The morning dragged on, Lance putting on his armor and heading onto the training deck to let off some steam. He lost himself in the rhythmic motion of sighting and pulling the trigger, the familiar knockback acting upon him in a soothing, grounding manner. Eventually, his fingers started to feel numb and Lance plopped onto the ground of the training deck with a weighty sigh.

No matter what he did, the strange dreams wouldn’t cease tormenting him, awake or asleep. Blue hummed with reassurance, but it did no good. It was impeding his sleep and affecting his focus by day. He decided to visit Coran, self-professed expert in a number of fields. If anything, Coran would be the most non-judging, non-worrying ear he could probably find on the ship.

Lance picked himself off the training deck, putting away his bayard and letting his feet carry him in a casual search of the castle-ship. He found Coran standing on the deck, arms folded behind his back and gazing out at the stars.

Lance’s breath stuttered in his lungs but he walked up to stand next to Coran, fixing his gaze upon distant stars. The screen had moved far past those stars, his mind whispered, far beyond.

“Are you alright, Lance?” Coran asked, voice low and tinged with not insignificant concern.

“Ah, you know. Fabulous as usual,” Lance said, arms unwilling to move and put on an act. Coran side-stepped closer. He cleared his throat before saying, “I was checking over the water-cycling systems a few weeks ago and couldn’t help but notice that you were up during the night a lot.”

Lance nodded, leaning forward on the railing. “I’ve been having strange dreams.”

“Night terrors?” Coran asked. “It’s common for those in war to have issues dealing with the happenings.”

“It’s not that. They’re not...nightmares, I would say,” Lance said, tracing a line over the glass. Connect star after star, create a story, and you have a constellation. “I keep seeing repeated images of space, but I feel like there’s something that I should know…”

Coran hummed under his breath. “You humans seem receptive to quintessence. In the past, certain Alteans have been able to have visions across great distances caused by connected quintessence. In fact, the bond of you Paladins to your Lions could cause such a thing. If I remember correctly, didn’t Keith sense your Lion’s quintessence?”

Quintessence? A message communicated across light-years? Lance couldn’t help but think that it was impossible but something halted him. Blue sang quietly in his mind, having listened in on his conversation. _Not quite,_ she said. _But close._

“I guess...that might be it,” Lance said after a long pause. He projected confusion and questions at Blue, but she refused to clarify her words. “I wonder whose quintessence it is, and what they’re trying to say.”

Coran looked at Lance before his eyes widened. “Lance… how long have you been having these dreams? Maybe...Shiro?”

Lance’s mouth tightened and his head dropped a little lower. His finger traced out a lion in the stars. “I’m sorry, Coran. I’ve been having them for as long as I can remember.”

Coran’s face fell a little before it smoothed out, reverting to plain concern. “It’s alright, Lance. We’ll find him. How about we see the princess? We haven’t received a distress call in a few of your Earth days. If we can move closer to the source, maybe your dreams will resolve themselves.”

Lance’s eyes widened. The prospect of getting closer to the source of the strange dreams was as tempting as it was terrifying. But, Lance eventually reasoned, it would at least be a step closer to finding out something that had been plaguing him for as long as he could remember. It was better to try to find out than to get nowhere at all. Lance met Coran’s eyes and nodded.

They walked out one of the main rooms, where Princess Allura and Hunk were engaged in a dramatic battle playing what appeared to be Go Fish while the space mice engaged in bafflingly athletic acrobatics, presumably cheering on Allura.

“Hi Lance! And Coran,” Hunk called, peeking over his hand-fan of cards.

“One moment!” Allura called, pinching her eyebrows together as her fingers hovered over her hand of cards. “Do you...have a seven?”

“Nope. Go Fish!” Hunk grinned as Allura squinted at him suspiciously, plucking out a card from the pile before turning resignedly in Lance’s direction. “Hello Coran; Lance.”

“Princess...Lance has been having quintessence visions.”

“What?” Allura said, dropping the card in her hand. Hunk’s brow furrowed with confusion.

Lance tried to settle his facial expression but wasn’t sure he succeeded in playing impassive. Blue rumbled in his head with silent support. “I’ve been having a lot of strange dreams lately and Coran thinks they’re quintessence dreams and that I could figure out their meaning if we get closer to the source.”

Allura opened her mouth, face hopeful, before Coran added, “It’s not Shiro.”

Allura’s mouth twisted but she looked at Lance’s face for a long moment before nodding. “Of course. I’ll call together the rest of the Paladins, then.”

* * *

 

They sat in their chairs in the control room as Allura’s hands hovered over her pedestals. The star map danced brilliantly in the air before Lance’s eyes, immeasurably beautiful. His eyes couldn’t resist plotting constellations and he had to will away thoughts of what his mother would think of the beautiful holographic star map that allowed him to fully submerge himself in the universe.

“It’s coming from from the approximate direction of the Venhai nebula,” Lance said after a few moments of deliberation. “Blue might have...tried to show me where the source was coming from this morning. But it’s really far. I can’t remember how many galaxies and nebulas she went past…”

Allura gazed back at him, giving a reassuring smile. “We’ll jump a to the Venhai nebula for now. It’s best we move in stages.”

“I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” Hunk said, giving Lance a thumbs-up even though his eyes showed unhidden concern. Lance didn’t deserve Hunk as a friend. He wasn’t even the slightest bit mad that Lance had never mentioned the dreams to him. Just concerned.

Keith nodded in agreement and Pidge gave a tentative smile. Coran, standing next to Lance, placed a comforting hand upon his shoulder as the castle started whirring and the wormhole spun into existence before them.

The second the castle flew out of the wormhole, Lance felt something resonate in his head. He clutched his head, leaning forward until his forehead met the cool surface of his thigh armor.

“Lance?”

“Are you okay? Lance?”

Lance breathed in deeply, hearing everyone’s footsteps rushing over. “I’m--I’m fine. We can keep going if you’re feeling up to it, Princess Allura.”

Hunk crouched down in front of Lance. “Are you sure? There’s no need to rush into this.”

“I need to know.” Lance straightened, looking around the room and meeting everyone’s eyes. “You’re only just finding out about this now, but I’ve had these dreams as long as I can remember. I...I really want to find out what they mean. I’m fine.”

* * *

 

They continued jumping. Allura only jumped in small increments, partly so that everyone could keep an eye on Lance and partly so Allura could correct her course. Lance’s directions were vague, but Allura tried her best to interpret them as she could.

She hadn’t known. She hadn’t even suspected. She’d always been sensitive to quintessence, able to match the Paladins to their Lions with ease and skilled enough with quintessence manipulation to save an entire Balmera.

Lance’s quintessence seemed unremarkable besides base characteristic differences. It had seemed to be content and at rest, only bonded to his Lion. There had been nothing to indicate some far-reaching bond. They’d traveled exceptionally far, almost crossing the entirety of mapped Altean space. Allura could feel her energy flagging, despite it being at full capacity earlier and despite their frequent long breaks as they reassessed direction and napped and ate food goo. They’d been traveling for about two Earth days, if she converted the time correctly.

With each jump, Lance had noticeably grown more ill. He was sweating nonstop, now, and his hands shook without end. He still urged them to go on, though, and Allura couldn’t resist his pleading eyes. There were no urgent distress calls, the Galra had not attacked in an Earth week, there had been no new leads on Shiro’s location. Keith had requested a break to allow them to rest and train, and Allura had granted it. She couldn’t suddenly back out now.

Behind her, the Paladins filed back into the room. Hunk was supporting Lance with an arm flung over his shoulder, helping him to his chair. Keith slipped him a packet of juice and Pidge murmured something to him quietly before returning to her chair.

It was time. Another jump. Allura closed her eyes, casting her mind out in the direction that Lance had indicated earlier. She twisted her quintessence and the castle-ship rose to the call, a wormhole that folded space spiraling into existence. She urged the ship onward and they flew out of the wormhole into a cloud of red-orange and green. A cluster of protostars loomed off to the right, and in the distance an absolutely massive, ginormous star shone such a bright blue that the castle-ship’s glass darkened to a dark grey.

Behind her, there was a sharp intake of air before Hunk called out, “Lance!” with fear and Allura could hear the slap of Paladin armor on the ground.

Allura whirled around in slow motion. Hunk was standing, bent over Lance’s prone form, face twisted in worry. Coran’s eyes were wide and he had his hands raised in front of him. Keith had skidded to a stop, frozen in shock, and Pidge’s eyes stared.

Lance’s body turned white-blue, and disappeared.

* * *

 

Lance felt hot. Hot all over, immeasurably hot. He felt vast, he felt powerful. He was big and exuded his own gravity. He felt….no, _was_ fire and heat and explosions and flares and nuclear fission and fusion in turn. He was blue, and the blue was him and he was confused and lost but it felt right, so very, very right…

The realization fell over him like it had always been there, the knowledge of his existence that had lurked behind the boundaries of his conscious thought. His memories fell in front of him, in order. A massive blue-white star, millions of years old. Millions of years of quintessential awareness traveling the known universe, dancing and frolicking with the quintessence of greater and less stars, seeing, feeling, and being. The awareness of a the rise of a new form of smaller, contained and self-sustaining quintessence. Watching the development of life forms over time, across the entire known universe and beyond.

Watching and learning and loving until...until some time ago, the star--he--felt the loss of quintessence in the universe, the perversion that unbalanced the natural order of things in the most terrible of ways. The quintessential uproar, the knowledge that something was out there doing things to the world that were never fated to be.

Splitting off his quintessence and sending it out into the universe, for there was quintessence that was fighting back and it needed help…

He was a star.

Stars. Lights in the sky, constellations and stories drawn with his mother’s fingers. The explosive birth of the protostars in his system and their slow formation and development of their quintessential awareness. Books on space for his birthday, the shifting of cosmic dust clouds. The Galra, still out there and stealing quintessence from the world and perverting it in terrible ways.

Lance fell back into himself, the second body he’d known. He could feel the exquisite chill of the floor of the castle-ship beneath him. He could hear the greetings of the neighboring young protostar cluster. Hunk, leaping at him and giving him a tight hug. Coran and Pidge joining in, then Keith and Allura too.

“Lance! You’re back!”

“We were so worried-”

“What happened?”

“Lance?”

A whisper on the edge of his awareness. A rumbling purr that echoed in his ears as Blue welcomed him back, overjoyed and pleased beyond words. Constellations made of connected quintessence instead of lights in the sky. The warmth of his space family.

Knowledge slipping into his head as if it had never left. The words tumbled out of his mouth.

“I...I know where Shiro is.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you guys for reading!! 
> 
> this is a oneshot and isn't going to be continued despite the leading ending. if anyone wants to run with this idea i'm totally 100% cool with it!! just link me so I can go and read it <3


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